After a six-year court battle, the downtown Central Church of Christ, rebranded in recent years at the Nashville Church of Christ, is back under control of the family of its founder.
Singer Amy Grant and her cousin Andy Burton led the charge to regain the organization and its original property. Their goal was to honor and to restore the legacy of the church created generations earlier by A.M. Burton in 1925. For decades, the institution was an important resource in multiple ways for some of Nashville’s poorest citizens.
A judge ruled earlier this month that under the leadership of Shawn Mathis, the church violated a conditional limitation of the original deed, which meant the property reverted to the A.M. Burton estate. Mathis took control in 2019 and his time in charge included a dramatic decrease in church membership, questionable business practices and allegations of mismanagement that attracted the attention of the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office…